Thousands of kids crammed into tiny cages, sleeping shoulder to shoulder on the hard floor, covered only with tinfoil blankets, detained for days on end. The grim conditions of immigrant children in border facilities paint a familiar picture that many associate with the “dark days” of the Trump administration. But this is now happening on Biden’s watch. The swelling number of immigrants held captive by US border agents exposes the new president’s immigration policy as a continuation of the longstanding bipartisan assault against undocumented workers’ rights.
The Biden administration “apprehended” more than 170,000 migrants at the border in March—up 70% since February and the highest number in 15 years. Among them, nearly 19,000 unaccompanied children were taken into custody, which is driving the dramatic upsurge in the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) migrant “holding facilities.” At centers like the tent facility in Donna, TX, capacity is 1,600% over pandemic recommendations, with more than 4,100 detainees in a space designed for 250 people. Over 3,400 of them were children.
Initially, Biden’s administration did not allow lawyers access to the facility—presumably to avoid the uncomfortable media exposure that would inevitably follow. Indeed, once visitors were admitted, images revealed that the “pods” designed to hold 32 children instead held around 600 minors. Thousands of children are being kept longer than the court-mandated maximum of 72 hours, many for more than two weeks. Despite the overcrowding, CBP is not testing children for COVID-19—even though more than 100 have tested positive after being transferred to other shelters. Some have to wait more than five days to shower, and many haven’t been allowed to call their relatives.
The Biden administration “apprehended” more than 170,000 migrants in March, which is the highest number in 15 years. / Image: US Department of Homeland Security, Public Domain
Asylum seekers turned away
In recent years, there has been a gradual increase in the number of people seeking asylum in the United States as they escape desperate conditions. While climate change is playing a role, in the final analysis, this is all the direct or indirect consequence of US imperialism. Circumstances have become particularly dire in the last year, as two hurricanes devastated Central America and left hundreds of thousands homeless in Honduras and Guatemala alone, displacing 7 million in the region spanning from Colombia to Mexico. Combined with the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and the economic crisis, hundreds of thousands have fled their home countries, hoping the new administration would show more leniency than its predecessor.
But the vast majority of those entering the country—who are primarily families and single adults—are being immediately turned away by border officials under Title 42. The Trump administration first implemented the controversial immigration policy in March 2020 in the name of the pandemic, giving border officials unilateral authority to deny asylum and expel anyone crossing the border, without due process. Even though lawyers, lawmakers, federal judges, and UN officials have denounced the policy as illegal, the Biden administration has continued to enforce it to target all unauthorized border crossings. In the words of Biden’s new Homeland Security Secretary chief, Alejandro Mayorkas: “The border is closed. We are expelling families, we are expelling single adults, and we have made a decision that we will not expel young, vulnerable children.”
But the rabidly anti-communist Cuban-American gusano Mayorkas forgot to mention that in November 2020, a federal judge had already mandated that unaccompanied children not be expelled, barring the practice because it violated public health and other laws. As always, the Democrats are attempting to sugarcoat their xenophobic border policy, stating that “securing our borders does not require us to ignore the humanity of those who seek to cross them.” In other words: “we kick migrants out and throw them in cages, but we do so ‘humanely.’”
Not only is the US border closed, but the Biden administration has secured an agreement for Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala to tighten their borders. For all the talk of addressing the “factors driving migration” at their root, Biden’s first foreign policy agreement with Latin American leaders was simply to put more troops on their own borders. This will ensure that asylum seekers are prevented from fleeing their countries through increased state repression. Since January this year, the US government has invested in over 28,000 radio ads, using propaganda to try to deter immigration.
Homeland Security Secretary chief Alejandro Mayorkas: “The border is closed. We are expelling families, we are expelling single adults.”/ Image: World Travel & Tourism Council via Wikimedia Commons
Lesser-evil logic
Those who have come out in defense of Biden’s handling of the “border crisis” claim that, unlike Trump, the current president isn’t forcibly separating children from their families. The liberal mainstream media’s headlines have quickly shifted their tone, writing about “migrant facilities for children” instead of “kids in cages.” For their part, the “progressives” in the House have criticized the administration’s handling of the situation—but their criticism is a far cry from the rhetoric used in previous years against Trump.
In 2019, AOC referred to similar migrant detention centers as “concentration camps.” This year, she Tweeted that the situation is “not okay, never has been okay, never will be okay—no matter the administration or party”—before outlining that an “immediate improvement” to alleviate the situation would “require influx facilities [with] children to be licensed.” In an interview, she stated that we shouldn’t “draw false equivalents” between Trump’s and Biden’s immigration policy and that “anyone who is trying to do that is doing a profound disservice to the cause of justice.”
Indeed, Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy wasn’t exactly the same as Biden’s or Obama’s. Trump systematized the forcible separation of children from their parents as a gruesome method of deterrence. However, the implementation of Title 42 for all except unaccompanied minors has led to a new kind of forced family separation—on the other side of the border. Many families that currently endure dehumanizing conditions in tent cities in Mexican border camps decide to send their children alone across the border as an act of desperation and their only chance of having a better life.
Recent reports show that Border Patrol and DHS have, in fact, continued to separate children from their adult caretakers under Biden. For example, when a 4-year-old girl from Guatemala crossed the border with her aunt last month, the authorities expelled the aunt and placed the child in the Donna tent facility. Even though her parents live in Maryland, the girl was eventually sent to foster care in Michigan.
Other reports show that some families detained by Border Patrol before March were later released in the US to make space in migrant facilities. But they dropped off the families—mostly mothers with very young children—in Arizona’s tiny desert towns, which have no resources, no hospitals, no fire departments, and are 30 miles across open desert to the next town. Last year, Arizona saw a record number of human remains recovered in the desert. Since 2004, about 3,400 migrants have perished due to heat exhaustion as they attempted to cross desert land in the south of the state.
Following in Obama’s footsteps
For all the bombastic campaign promises and executive orders from Biden, Kamala, and co., little distinguishes them from their predecessors. Biden moved quickly with executive action on immigration, aiming to halt construction of Trump’s border wall, preserve DACA, reverse the travel ban against predominantly Muslim countries, and ramp down the “Remain in Mexico” Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program—which forced migrants seeking asylum to wait for their cases to be processed while living in squalid camps along the Mexican border. He also rescinded a Trump-era rule that denied green cards to immigrants who use public benefits.
Additionally, Biden unveiled a proposal to provide a “path to citizenship” to the 11 million undocumented workers already residing in the US. The New York Times branded this “the latest effort in a decades-long attempt to reimagine the nation’s immigration system by presidents from both parties, including George W. Bush and Barack Obama.” However, the White House and other Democrats admitted that it was unlikely to ever pass in the House or Senate in its current form unless it were drastically altered and gutted. This is something the administration was counting on from the beginning. The fact that the illusory bipartisan “effort” to “reimagine” the country’s immigration system has gone on for “decades” without anything to show for it but horror without end for millions of migrants speaks volumes.
Many of the other orders also come with caveats. Although Biden promised not to build “another foot of wall,” the already-constructed portions remain intact. And Mayorkas has since told DHS employees that they may restart some construction to “plug gaps” left by Trump. While there will be no further MPP enrollments, the change in MPP policy will not apply to those asylum seekers already in the program. In any case, all migrants crossing the border are being sent back to Mexico under Title 42! And while Biden originally proposed a 100-day moratorium on deportations of undocumented immigrants already residing in the US, this initiative was indefinitely blocked by a federal judge.
At best, most of Biden’s proposals amount to a return to the “golden days” of his good friend, Barack Obama. While rolling back some of the most draconian policies imposed by the Trump administration, this is far from enough to provide meaningful relief from the horrific conditions faced by millions of asylum seekers. But let’s not forget that Obama was known as the “Deporter-in-Chief” for a reason, as he deported more immigrants than any other president. For the sake of comparison, Trump deported roughly 940,000 in his four years in office, versus 1.6 million during Obama’s first term, with more than 3 million deported by Obama in total. The Obama administration designed and built the original “chain-link fence pens”—the cages used for migrant children and families. And the head of the DHS who supervised the plans at the time was none other than Alejandro Mayorkas—Biden’s pick for the same position today!
Obama deported more than three million during his presidency, which “earned” him the title “Deporter-in-Chief.” / Image: Joe Brusky via Flickr
It was Bill Clinton who initially started building the existing border fence. And for all the Democrats’ promises that they wouldn’t give “one dollar” to fund Trump’s wall, they later gave in and approved $1.4 billion for “fencing,” along with a record budget for CBP, ICE, and to increase officers and technology at ports of entry. In their fundamental approach, there has been a seamless continuity between Republican and Democratic administrations over the last couple of decades.
For socialists, there is no contradiction between providing a humane, decent standard of living to all “legal” citizens in the wealthiest country on earth—while doing the same for those who happen to have been born in parts of the world plundered by US imperialism. There are more than enough resources in the US and worldwide to provide quality housing, education, healthcare, and jobs for all—once those resources are freed from the shackles of the capitalist market and the nation state.
As Marx explained, the workers have no country. A socialist congressperson not constrained by the narrow limits of the two capitalist parties would not provide left cover for the Democrats. Revolutionary socialists put forward a bold program of demands that include immediate, unconditional legalization for all workers and an end to all immigration and asylum controls. Such demands require that we break from the confines of the two-party system and build a mass socialist party that will fight for the rights of all workers, regardless of their immigration status.